How many feeds, day vs night

[Sls668]

I posted this in sleep but reposting here for traffic

My baby is 11 weeks old and is breastfed. There have been a few minor hiccups along the way but generally it’s going pretty well. She is going 3(ish) hours between feeds through the day, her feeds are long, usually minimum 30 minutes but often 40 minutes and she regularly falls asleep when feeding. She cluster feeds from 7pm until around 10pm but sleeps at the same time.
In the night, we start the night with her in her bedside crib but it doesn’t really go very well. She wakes often, usually every 1-2 hours (sometimes less 🙈) and I feed her back to sleep. We usually end up co-sleeping when I’ve had enough of staying up to feed her, we follow the safety guidelines and, while not in my long term plans, I’m ok with this for now. I had just kind of accepted that this was the norm for babies of her age and was ok with this set up. Personally I think she sometimes feeds for comfort more than because she’s hungry.
However, my HV thinks I should feed her more regularly through the day (every 2 hours) so that she will wake up less in the night. She thinks she is hungry in the night because she doesn’t feed enough in the day.
Does this sound right? I thought it was standard for babies of her age to start going longer between day feeds but also for a lot of babies to still need lots of comfort through the night - I mean officially she’s still in the fourth trimester. Is my HV right or shall I just keep going on how I was? How often do other breastfed babies feed throughout the day and night?

I would feed her when she's hungry. It's very normal for babies to wake and feed more often at night. Besides the fact that it's normal for them to wake every 2 hours ish anyway and feeding is usually what puts them back to sleep, the night time feeds build your supply for the next day. So she's feeding lots during the night to make sure she has lots of milk the next day. I would let her keep going with this for now, especially if feeds are still taking 30-40 minutes during the day. Mine was usually on both sides and done in 10 minutes at that age, so it could be she is hungrier and trying to up your supply. That's not to say there is anything wrong with your supply, but she's a growing baby and is needing more and more milk. I don't think there is any logic to what your HV is saying. It would apply for, say, a 9 month old, but not for an 11 week old. I would see what your partner can do to help you get more sleep though, settling her if needed during the night, doing nappy changes, taking her for an hour or two in the morning before work so you can get another stretch of sleep.

My 8 week old is breastfed. He will feed roughly every 2 hours during the day, with a longer break in the afternoon because he has a long nap. I feed him around 9 / 9:30pm and he is usually asleep by 10:30pm. He will then sleep until roughly 4:30pm, at which point the 2 hourly cycle begins again for the day.

I think I am mostly just lucky to have a good sleeper, but it’s possible that his more frequent day feeds are setting him up for the night. However, he is fed on demand so it’s a routine he has set for himself really. I’m not sure he would be happy if I tried imposing a different routine on him.

4:30am not pm!

Your HV is talking bollocks sorry

DS kept his feed intervals the same, day and night, for a loooooooong time

Thanks guys, if I feed on demand which is what I was doing previously she was going for between 2hr 45 mins and 3hr 15 mins (beginning of one feed to beginning of the next) which seemed ok to me. As she feeds for so long if I go 2 hrs from the start of one feed to the start of the next, we only have about an hour in between to do everything else!

@Vtech we had that nice long stretch in the night for a while at around that age too but it didn’t last long, hopefully yours will! That’s what is making me think she is feeding for comfort in the night, not really because she’s hungry

My baby is 8 months old, since birth she has fed two hourly and still does day and night.

Feed when baby wants to be fed, not according to someone else's opinion.

I've been using Huckleberry for the past few days and mine feeds for about 15 mins a time with an hour and a half non feeding time in between. I basically just offer boob whenever she shows hunger cues or is upset in any way without an obvious other cause e.g. dirty nappy. I don't know if that's right though, maybe I'm encouraging her to snack. At night when I first put her down between 8 and 8.30 she tends to sleep until midnight and then is roughly up every 2 hours.

I demand fed, often would be every 2 hours sometimes hourly and also fed through the night. They grow out of it when they are ready. We coslept